


No Matter Where Life Takes Us

by hiikigane



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, M/M, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-03 12:22:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21179372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiikigane/pseuds/hiikigane
Summary: "Richie, it's starting again. You have to come back."A somewhat condensed, Reddie-centric version of It Chapter Two where Eddie lives and there's a happily ever after.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I have no idea, I just woke up one day, was like "aight let's do this" and did it. I've only watched the movies (both ch 1 and ch 2) once, and haven't re-read the book in a while so please just chalk up any wrong details to canon divergence.

This was an unusually down-to-earth, realistic dream.

  
Richie wasn't one for dreaming—an ironic statement given that he was now based in Hollywood, a city built on dreams, but it was true. Dreams were either built on events in the past or fantasies of events that had yet to happen, and he'd much rather seize life by the balls and live in the moment. The only time his mind ever painted vivid pictures of anything was when he was tripping, and he had made a conscious decision to cut back on drugs because he was at the peak of his career and didn't plan on dying of an overdose anytime soon. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, where foggy (or perhaps, deliberately removed?) memories lingered, a childish voice cried, "They're gazebos! They're bullshit!" Richie couldn't remember who had made this proclamation, but the voice had made him smile, and he had resolved to save the drugs for really stressful situations.

  
Another reason this had to be a dream was that his body felt different. Even sprawled out on a hammock, he felt gangly and uncoordinated, like a kid who'd just hit his growth spurt and was trying to navigate through a shop of crystal figurines with the grace of an elephant. Unlike people his age, who could narrate specific events from their childhood in vivid detail, Richie barely remembered anything his childhood, although he knew it had taken place in Maine and accordingly, drew on New England stereotypes for material in his stand-up routines. It was weird that he was dreaming of being a kid when that part of his life was a blur.

  
He ran his hands through his hair, marveling at the thick locks that had given way to a receding hairline in real life, and touched someone's leg. Instinctively, his smile faded as he snapped, "Get your foot out of my face."

  
Huh. Was that how he'd used to sound?

  
A vaguely familiar voice snapped back, "Your ugly face shouldn't be within stretching distance of my foot, Trashmouth. That's because it's not your turn on the hammock! We have a schedule!"

  
"Maybe the mind-blowing sex I had with your mom is muddling my mind!"

  
"G-guh-guys," a third voice said wearily. "Tone down on the f-fl-flirting, will you?"

  
"Fuck off!" Richie and the other guy chorused. Richie focused on the offending person's face for the first time. Brown hair, hazel eyes, a smattering of freckles and lips which were currently pursed in distaste. A name jumped into his mind. "Eddie?"

  
"What?!"

  
Ah, so his subconscious was right after all. Richie felt his face muscles relax into a grin. "Nothing. Just surprised at how much spunk that little body can hold. You're like one of those little chilies that people think can't be too spicy, but when you bite down..." he pinched Eddie's foot, "Yowza!"

  
Eddie yelped and his foot lashed out, knocking off Richie's glasses. "Don't fucking touch me! I don't know where your hands have been!"

  
"Where else could they have been, Eds? Up your mom's vagina?"

"Fuck you!"

  
"That's getting really old, Richie," yet another voice chimed in. Unfortunately, Richie couldn't see the face of the speaker, nor the guy with the stutter. It was mildly annoying that his eyesight was as bad in dreams as it was in real life. "Get some new material."

  
"Yeah, well, give me a moment to dust off my book of Jewish jokes."

  
"I'll help you rule out some of the obviously unfunny ones," the boy said dryly.

  
"I wouldn't expect you to know a good joke, Stanny boy," Richie replied haughtily. _Stanny?  
_

  
"Maybe not, but I'm not the aspiring stand-up comedian."

  
For a while, a comfortable silence reigned, broken only by the distant humming of cicadas and the rustle of pages. Richie leaned over the hammock, groping blindly for his glasses and ignoring Eddie's impatient tuts as the former's movements jostled him. Unfortunately, since he didn't know exactly where they had landed, he overbalanced and fell out of the hammock.

  
Three thousand miles away, forty-year-old Richie Tozier jerked awake.

  
"Wow," Richie muttered, staring up at the ceiling. He kicked out his legs—nothing there but his comfy bedspread—and ran a hand through his hair—a little thin on top. The childhood memory his subconscious had dredged up was over. He was back in his middle-aged body.

He tried to hang on to the details of the dream, but they were already slipping away. There had been at least three other kids with him. Stanny (or was it Stanley?), Eddie and the boy with the stutter. They had been underground (weirdly enough, there had still been enough light to see by, judging by how he'd been able to focus on Eddie's face). Kids hanging out in an underground bunker like it was fucking 1943. _Always knew Maine was a shithole_, he thought to himself and chuckled.

  
By the time he'd made himself semi-presentable for the drive down to the studio for his first act of the day, their names had slipped out of his mind completely.

  
Of course, because the universe loved to fuck with him, he received a call that brought that memory—and many other unpleasant ones—front and centre.

His phone rang as he was sitting in makeup. The number on the display screen was an unfamiliar one, with no name attached to it. Probably a spam call. The right thing to do would be to ignore it, but Richie always got nervous before performances and if he didn’t do something to displace that nervous energy, he would find himself barricaded in a toilet stall, throwing up his meager breakfast. The makeup artists would pretend not to notice his clammy, pale skin and sweat-slicked hair as they soundlessly reapplied his makeup, but word would get around that he was either coming down from a drug-induced high or—heaven forbid—_scared _of going onstage , and neither option appealed to him.

He answered the call with his best impression of a gruff biker voice, harkening back to his early days as a stand-up comedian performing in shitty bars where half the people were wasted, the other half were stoned, and no one was listening. "Hello, Big Daddy’s customized condom shop. The one place where a small dick can provide immense pleasure."

  
"Richie, is that you?"

"Don't know no Richie here, sire. Dick too small to keep a condom on?"

  
"Richie, this is Mike Hanlon."

_Mike Hanlon_. A perfectly innocuous name, but it filled him with a sense of dread all the same. Unbidden, an image of a group of children standing in a circle, hands clasped, flashed through his mind. Mike. Bill. Ben. Bev. Stan. Eddie. The reflection of the sun off a shard of glass. A moment of pain. A trail of blood. And a promise...

  
"Richie, it's starting again. You have to come back."

* * *

Eddie’s hands were trembling as he steered his car out of the parking garage. He wished he didn’t have to drive—the odds of dying in a car crash were far higher than that of dying in a plane crash, _and _he had technically already gotten in one when that damned phone call from Mike came in, but he had to get to the airport somehow. He distrusted taxis (both the traditional kind and the new-fangled, ride-sharing variety), and he sure as hell didn’t want to take the train. All those people sneezing into their hands, wiping their noses and then touching those _disgusting_ seats—he could practically feel the germs crawling over his skin. That left him with the “spare” car that he paid nearly $5,000 a year to keep in a parking garage, since their apartment only provided one parking lot per unit and he needed his “main” car for work. As far as he knew, Myra hadn’t used it at all, even though she knew where it was and had a license. She claimed that the drivers in New York City scared her, and Eddie couldn’t blame her.

They were both scared of a lot of things.

Myra had tried to get him to stay. When Eddie walked into the apartment, ashen-faced and refusing to say anything more than that he was leaving for a while, he’d take the spare car because he’d gotten into a crash on the way back, nothing to worry about, she had burst into tears and fired a million questions at him. Did he need a _break_? Was it work stress, or was it _her_? Was he secretly seeing a doctor for an _illness_ that he’d contracted, or was he seeing _someone else_? _Eddie, you can rest at home, what if you forget to bring your pills and vitamins with you? You should talk to someone at the office about your hours, I knew they were working you too hard, it’s bad for your health, you’ll drop dead of a heart attack before your next birthday and I’ll be a widow…_

Eddie’s heart clenched, and for a fleeting moment, he thought the heart attack Myra had prophesied was finally upon him. This was immediately followed by the thought, _free at last._ He didn’t want to be married to Myra. He didn’t want to go back to Derry. Maybe it would be best if he just let go of the wheel and let the next car take him out, so he wouldn’t have to go back to their apartment and face her tears, nor face whatever it was that was waiting for him back home.

But even as he thought this, he knew he wouldn’t go through with it. He would continue to trudge back to Derry, even as every fiber of his being strained in the opposite direction. They had promised, after all.

_You’re braver than you think, Eds._

Had someone really said this to him, or was he just trying to talk himself into continuing the march toward his own execution?

It wasn’t until he was hauling his luggage out of the trunk (he’d just barely managed to cram the contents of his medicine cabinet into a single carrier) that he realized he had forgotten to make arrangements for the car. It would most likely be clamped or towed.


	2. Chapter 2

Richie was exhausted.

He’d tried to entertain himself with the movies, WiFi and unlimited alcohol (a perk of flying first-class—hey, it was his money and it wasn’t like there were a lot of options on such short notice), but quickly realized that the movies were shitty, and going online meant answering the questions of a lot of very pissed-off people, including but not limited to his agent and publicist. He’d ended up slipping in and out of an uneasy, restless doze with a glass of lager perched on the armrest. Memories he didn’t even know he’d been holding on to filled his mind as the plane barreled toward Maine, each one more vivid than the last, as though they had finally been given permission to return. How had he forgotten an entire chunk of his life?

Hanging out with Bill, one of the few people who’d been willing to be seen with him after he’d gone and made himself a target for Henry Bowers and his gang. Running away from Henry Bowers and his gang. Throwing rocks at Henry Bowers and his gang. Sharing cigarettes with Bev (the first time he’d bummed a cigarette from her, he’d nearly coughed out a lung, but had to pretend he was all right so he wouldn’t look like a loser in front of the others), and deliberately blowing the smoke in Eddie’s direction just to get a rise out of him. Trying to distract Stan while he studied for his Bar Mitzvah. Half-listening to Ben and Mike exchange “interesting” tidbits about the history of Derry, the way he and Eddie might swap collectibles from comic books. There was still an undefined sense of dread lurking in the background, but a common thread in all these memories was how _close _they had been. They were all outsiders, each battling their own demons, but together, they’d been unstoppable. He wondered what they were like now. He especially wondered about Eddie.

  
  
By the time Richie finally pulled up at the Derry Town House, the hotel where Mike had made reservations for them, he was tired from the onslaught of memories, a nagging fear that their circle was incomplete (whatever the fuck _that_ meant), and the voice telling him that he should get out before it was too late.

  
  
He picked up his room keys from the reception desk, with no further plans in mind other than to calm the maelstrom of thoughts swirling around his head by crashing until it was time for dinner, which Mike had also made reservations for. It was then that he spotted another man staring listlessly out of the lobby window, clutching an object Richie hadn't seen in years but recognized instantly. How many times had he watched a young Eddie take puffs from that tiny blue receptacle? Now, Richie watched as the man lifted it to his mouth and pressed the pump.

"Eddie?"

  
  
The man swung around to face him, and Richie got a proper look at the adult version of wheezy, asthmatic Eddie Kaspbrak. His brown hair was still combed back in a style that showed his forehead, which now had prominent worry lines that seemed carved into the skin. The dusting of freckles that had always reminded Richie of ice-cream sprinkles had faded, suggesting a life spent indoors in an air-conditioned office. But his guarded expression fell away as recognition set in. "Richie?”

* * *

"Well, as I live and breathe, it's Eds, in the flesh!" Richie proclaimed, beaming widely. He smiled as if Eddie was the most interesting person he'd ever spoken to, and it was a very different sort of attention to his mother or Myra's smothering, overbearing concern. Another missing memory slid into place as Eddie remembered the very first time Richie had smiled at him like that.

  
  
In a small town like Derry where everyone knew everyone else but the information was mostly obtained through secondhand gossip, Eddie's mother had taken it upon herself to scope out Eddie's classmates. Richie was the messy-haired embodiment of every loving mother's nightmare. His family was solidly middle-class, but he was foul-mouthed, constantly covered in dirt and bruises from brawling with hooligans and had absolutely no respect for authority. Eddie had been warned not to speak to him, and he was fine with that—Richie's unabashed confidence was too intimidating. But one day, Richie had dropped his lunch tray next to Eddie's with a theatrical sigh while Eddie was counting out his vitamins (to be taken before eating) and loudly exclaimed, "What are those, birth control pills?"

  
  
Bill, who had been eating with Eddie, rolled his eyes as though he'd heard it all before. Eddie hadn’t planned on replying; he was used to letting insults from classmates roll off his back and Richie, while not a big, hulking monster like Henry Bowers, was not exactly someone he wanted to challenge. But then he pictured Bill struggling to form the words that would repel this gangly, myopic asshole intruding on their lunch just because Eddie was too cowardly to step in, and the words spilled out before he could stop them. "Yeah, for your mom."

Richie had looked shocked for a split second before bursting into laughter and pinching his cheek. "Eddie Spaghetti gets off a good one! But I've got the market on your mom jokes, and you're too cute to be so crude. Try insulting my pet dog next time—I actually love him."

  
As it turned out, Bill and Richie hung out from time to time as well, so Eddie was able to use Bill as an excuse for Richie's presence, because his mother had no (or at least, less) problems with Bill. They had bantered and squabbled and shared ice creams and comics, and somehow, twenty-seven years had passed and Richie Tozier was standing before him again, looking genuinely happy to see him.

  
  
"I hate that nickname," Eddie muttered.

  
  
"I know," Richie beamed. That smile was doing weird things to Eddie's breathing. He lifted the inhaler to his mouth just for something to do with his hands, and Richie looked at them with interest. "Is that a ring?"

  
  
_Oh._

  
  
"Um, yeah."

  
  
"So you're, like, married? To a woman?"

  
  
"Why wouldn't I be?" Eddie cringed as he realized how harsh he sounded. He didn't have anything against gay people, he just wasn't one. He was married to a woman, for crying out loud.

  
  
Eddie couldn't be sure, but the smile on Richie's face seemed to dim a little. Barely two seconds later, it was back in full force. "Because when I think of a woman's image of Prince Charming, it isn't a feisty little asthmatic who likes to wear short shorts. They love handsome, funny men with huge dicks, like me."

  
  
"I think you mean 'balding and annoying'," Eddie retorted, smiling as Richie dropped to his knees, clutching his chest in agony. "So I take it you're not married?"

  
  
Richie looked up at Eddie with a mock innocent expression. "Why wouldn't I be? Your mom and I are very happy together. You know, child, you really should show more respect to your stepfather..."

  
  
"Beep beep, Richie," Eddie sighed, but he couldn't keep the smile out of his voice or deny the sudden lightness in his chest. The world might be going to shit, but at least Richie was here with him.


	3. Chapter 3

Richie's nerves were still jangling as he peeled out of the parking lot with an ear-splitting screech. Dinner had been going swimmingly, and he had almost been able to delude himself into thinking he was at a high school reunion, finding out what had become of the fat kid (now a trim and fit architect, how about that?), the kid with the tragic family life (a published author married to a popular actress that he'd heard of, but never worked with before), the so-called school slut (a fashion designer, Eddie's wife apparently owned several of her dresses and bags). Oh, there had been moments of tension, like when six-thirty had come and gone and Stan's seat had remained empty. Mike had reached for his phone, hesitated and said, "Let's just order first, he can't complain about our choices when he was always lecturing us about the importance of punctuality." Or like when they were exchanging stories about their lives and Ben had asked Mike why he hadn't gone to a different place to be a librarian, and Mike had replied quietly, "I don't know. I just felt I couldn't leave, not with all this unfinished business," and everyone had fallen silent as the exact nature of their unfinished business with Derry almost broke through the hazy barrier of memory. But a few glasses of beer had a way of blurring out the sharp edges, and he had spent most of dinner cracking jokes and bickering with Eddie, just like old times.

  
Then dinner had turned into a fucking nightmare, what with the monsters in their cookies (He'd almost put that in his _mouth_! What the _fuck_!) and the little kid coming up to him and going, "The fun's just beginning!" (How was he to know the little demon was a fan? Kids shouldn't be watching his show!) The monster clown could have Derry. He was leaving.

  
The receptionist at the hotel didn't even look up from her magazine as he burst through the front door and pounded up the stairs. Mike might have been on to something about It exerting some sort of supernatural power over Derry to make its residents indifferent to violent crime and abductions—a normal person would have jumped, shouted at him to tone it down, or shown some form of reaction to his loud entrance. But there was none. _It would be so easy to disappear here_, he thought, and shivered.

  
His room was, thankfully, exactly the way he'd left it. Richie didn't know what he'd do if he'd opened the door to find a huge fucking Jack-in-the-box clown or one of the other horrors from the restaurant. He swung the ratty backpack containing exactly one set of clothes and his phone charger over his shoulders and exited the room, making sure to slam the door extra hard. He thumped down the stairs equally loudly and had just reached the foot of the stairs when the front door swung open and a frazzled-looking Eddie stepped inside.

  
If Richie was acting with even an ounce of logic, he would have continued walking. Maybe he left this accursed town like he'd done all those years ago, the memories and all the feelings associated with them would fade for good. But twenty-seven years later, Eddie continued to exert a weird pull over him, and he couldn't bear the idea of walking out of Eddie's life without one last word. He paused in front of Eddie, a trademark Trashmouth quip on the tip of his tongue. What came out instead was completely different. "Come with me, Eds."

* * *

"Wh-"

  
"You're leaving too, right? Let's blow this joint. Get as far away from here as possible. The fucker only wakes up every twenty-seven years, right? Let him have this shitty little town. California is literally at the opposite end of the country. You'll be safe there. Come with me."

  
Eddie stared up at Richie, whose eyes were blazing with an intensity he'd never seen before. He was being offered a chance to put this mess out of his head, to leave his comfortable, boring job and his loveless, boring marriage behind. Leave it all for Richie.

  
_For Richie?_

  
"I...my..."

  
"Eddie! Richie!"

  
The two of them jumped apart. Eddie hadn't realized how close they'd been standing. He fiddled nervously with his wedding ring as the rest of the Losers came striding toward them. They must have been hot on his tail to get here so quickly. Eddie himself had been driving at breakneck speed to... what, exactly? Chase Richie down? Grab his stuff and leave before anyone could guilt him into staying? A mix of both?

  
"You can't leave," Bev said bluntly.

"Why not?" Richie demanded. "I'm not staying here to be clown food!"

"Because we'll all die if we leave."

"Oh, so you're a fortune teller now, are you?"

"I saw it in the Deadlights."

  
Bev hadn't raised her voice at all, but Richie fell silent, and Eddie felt a collective shiver run through the group. He had never heard this word before in his life—at least, he didn't think he had—but the way Bev’s tongue had curled around it sounded a little like how a medieval person might talk about electric lights. Something that must be divine in origin even if it was the work of the Devil, because there was no way he could even begin to understand without losing his mind.

  
Richie was the first to recover, of course. "I don't need visions to tell me I'm going to die eventually. The main difference is that I plan to die with my face pillowed by the artificially inflated tits of a hooker, not being digested by the stomach acid of a clown."

  
"We'll all die gruesome deaths even if we leave. Derry is the main source of Its power, but It's influence extends far beyond that. Our interactions with It as children have bled into our adult lives." Bev pinched at the skin of her ring finger, and Eddie noticed for the first time that it was empty. "It wants us back because It wants to end this, once and for all."

  
"Well, isn't it fucking stupid to challenge It on home ground? That's like going to McDonald's and asking for a Whopper!"

  
"The circle," Mike said quietly. "It needs to end where it started."

  
"The circle is incomplete," Richie fired back, and his brow wrinkled as though the words had just rung a distant bell.

  
"W-we'll just draw a s-sm-smaller one."

  
Everyone turned to Bill.

"Th-that f-fucker killed my brother. He's k-killed lots of other p-people, other k-k-kids, before we came back. They may be d-d-dead, but we can still protect others."

  
"No offense, Bill, but your brother is dead and he's not gonna come back to life again even if you protect a hundred kids!"

  
Bill made a convulsive movement, as though to lunge at Richie. Eddie thought he heard the echo of a similar conversation from twenty-seven years ago as he jumped in front of Richie, ready to stop the brawl. Opposite him, Mike did the same with Bill.

  
"I've been doing research," Mike said into the stony silence. "There might be a way to defeat It once and for all. It's a sort of ritual. We didn't know this when we were kids. We could use it now."

  
"I want to f-finish that fucker," Bill said stubbornly. "I'm nuh-n-not saying I'm not scared. But this is p-p-personal. It made this personal when It took G-Georgie."  
  
The silence stretched on. Eddie longed to look back at Richie, but he didn't have eyes on the back of his head. He wondered if they were thinking the same thing: Georgie, frozen forever at age eight, and Bill, physically aging but still frozen by the trauma of his death.

  
A gusty sigh came from behind Eddie. "Fuck it. Let's kill this fucking clown."

  
The group broke up shortly after that. Bill went off with Mike to see whatever it was pertaining to the ritual that Mike wanted to show him. Ben, who had always been terrible with conflict, disappeared up the stairs to his room. Bev fished a cigarette out of her pocket and lit it. Richie nudged her, and she passed it to him before searching for another for herself. Eddie had a million questions for Richie (_Were you serious about California? Would you still want me to come if we make it out of this alive? Do you know not knowing is driving me crazy?_), but he could hardly stand awkwardly between them while they chain-smoked their way through Bev's cigarette supply. So he swallowed his questions, thrust his hands into his pockets and turned away.


	4. Chapter 4

Richie woke up the next day with a low-grade headache and a mix of fear and shame in the pit of his stomach. The fear—well, that was obvious, wasn't it? But the shame stemmed from two things, what he'd said to Bill and his dumb proposal to Eddie. Asking a married man to drop everything and move across the country was practically a confession of love, even if he had cloaked it in the language of keeping Eddie safe. Maybe he should have invited the wife along, made it a threesome.

  
_He's married. Let it go._

  
Breakfast was a grim affair. Unlike yesterday, there was no need to play catch-up with each others' lives, and Mike got right down to business explaining what they needed to do. Splitting up to search for items from their past in a town they barely knew anymore sounded like the perfect way to get killed, but there was an undeniable logic to Mike's words. They had been alone when they first encountered It, and they would have to face down their fears again before they stood a fighting chance as a collective group.

  
Richie had no idea where to start. If there was anything from his childhood left in Derry, it was probably rotting in a landfill or sitting on the shelves of a secondhand shop. He didn't fancy poking around a secondhand shop in hopes of finding an old Smiths cassette tape or Def Leppard poster; most secondhand shops got pissy if you made small purchases and he wasn't going to buy some old woman's hideous armchair just to appease the shop owner. What sort of place would have appealed to a lonely, slightly geeky boy who thrived in noisy environments?

He passed by the town square, noting that the open-air stage was all decked out for a festival. Someone was doing sound tests—music blared, was cut off, then blared again. Cheerleaders practiced a routine, pom-poms and short skirts flying. It was noisy, yes, but Richie had only ever been a casual observer of such events and doubted he was going to find anything there. He looked across the street and felt a shiver run down his spine. The paint was peeling, the windows were grimy and he could just see the silhouettes of vintage game machines, preserved like the inside of a crypt. It was the arcade.

  
(_The fuck you doing, hitting on my cousin?_)

He pushed experimentally on the door, which swung open. Nobody even glanced his way as he slipped inside.

(_You didn't tell me this town was full of fucking fairies!_)

  
The interior looked like the set piece of a post-apocalyptic zombie movie. The walls were tagged with graffiti, the dirt-caked carpet was a mess of dry leaves and abandoned needles, and some of the machines had been tipped over. The glass displays behind the counter, where stuffed toys and other gifts that could be exchanged with tickets used to be prominently displayed, were empty. He walked past the counter and saw the Street Fighter game machine, opposite the token dispenser. It was still standing.

  
Richie turned his back on the game, forcing his thoughts away from the unpleasant memories that were threatening to overwhelm him (_Four-eyed cocksucker! Fucking faggot!_). Instead, he forced himself to remember the anticipation that had swelled up in his young heart as he fed his hard-earned allowance into the machine and stuffed his pocket full of game tokens, a magical exchange that allowed him to reinvent himself as a strong, muscular fighter who would punch down anyone who tried to talk shit to him, like Bowers.

  
  
A game token should work fine for the purpose of the ritual.

  
  
He reached gingerly into the dispenser slot and felt around the inside, as he'd used to do on days when he was broke in hopes of finding spare tokens. It didn't take long before his fingers hit a small, circular object. He pulled it out, studying the design. It was definitely an arcade token. _That was easy_, he thought triumphantly.

  
Then the reality of the situation crashed back down on him. He was alone in an abandoned arcade. It was practically an invitation to the clown to pick him off. He hurried back to the entrance, slipping the token in his pocket.

  
The festival preparations were still going on strong when he stepped closer to the town square, hoping to shake off the feelings of loneliness and isolation that had descended on him. Richie noticed, for the first time, that there was something or someone perched on top of the Paul Bunyan statue overlooking the town square. Before he could try to get a closer look, someone bumped roughly into him and thrust a piece of paper into his hand. He opened his mouth to yell at the person, then looked back down at the paper and felt the words die in his throat. It was an invitation to his funeral service.

  
"Missed me, Richie?"

* * *

Eddie ran out of the pharmacy, semi-hysterical and drenched in the noxious black slime the leper had thrown up over him. He should have stayed in the well-lit pharmacy, taken the inhaler from Mr. Keene and left. Instead, he had wandered behind the counter, into the basement, and run smack into the leper. _Fucking dimwit. Remember what happened in there when you were a kid? Why would you ever go back again?_

  
Nobody paid him any attention as he pounded down the street like the world's most obvious robber trying to get away from the scene of the crime. They didn't seem to notice that he was covered in muck either. The indifferent expression of the assistant as he struggled to shove the pharmacy doors open certainly gave credence to the theory that nobody could see what was happening; this was a private torture session for him and him alone. He needed a shower. Where was the fucking hotel?

  
His breath was starting to come out in short, wheezy gasps, and it felt like a band was slowly tightening around his lungs. Oh shit, he'd forgotten all about his asthma. His body was unused to being pushed like that—as a child, his mother had fought tooth and nail for him to be excused from PE lessons, and as an adult, he took his vitamins and watched his diet, but years of being told to avoid rough-and-tumble sports and exercise to avoid getting hurt meant his stamina was non-existent. He reached instinctively for his inhaler, remembered that it was covered in goo and leaned against the side of a building, wheezing and trying to curb the rising panic inside of him.

  
_You don't really have asthma, Eddie._

  
_Bullshit_, he thought, unsure who he was arguing with_. I'm having trouble breathing right now. If I don't get my hands on an inhaler, I'm going to die!  
_

  
_It's a gazebo. It tricks your mind into thinking you're fine, and you _are_ fine, Eddie. You only think you have asthma because your mother made it so._

  
_Bullshit_, he thought again, but the word "gazebo" reminded him of something. Hadn't he had this conversation with Mr. Keene and his mother a long, long time ago? Mr. Keene, who had confessed to Eddie that all those inhalers and pills weren't doing anything for him, but had been happy to keep billing his mother for them? Mr. Keene, who had passed him an inhaler just moments ago? But if he really didn't need his inhaler, why had he continued using one even after finding out?

  
Eddie pressed his back against the building, focusing on the feeling of the rough bricks through his shirt. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing normally. _If it's all in my head, I just need to wait for it to pass. If it doesn't, well, I guess I do have asthma, and I'll deal with it. Call for help or something; it’s a lot easier nowadays with cell phones. Panicking is just going to make it worse. In... out.. In... out..._

  
Suddenly, his legs gave out and he fell hard on his rear, banging his head against the wall on the way down. "Fuck, that hurt!" He continued to mutter curses under his breath as he massaged the back of his head, and it took a while for him to realize that he was breathing perfectly fine. For the first time in his life, the asthma attack had passed without an inhaler. "Jesus."

  
This was a lot to think about.


	5. Chapter 5

_I know your secret, your dirty little secret._

  
The mocking taunt stayed with Richie long after Pennywise had disappeared, long after everyone had unfrozen and gone back to whatever they were doing, without any sense of having been interrupted at all. He'd been very, very lucky that Pennywise had, for whatever reason, been contented with taunting him a little and then fucking off. Just like during his encounter with the Paul Bunyan statue as a child, he had squeezed his eyes shut and muttered, "It's not real" over and over again, but it hadn't worked this time, and Richie thought he knew why. He was still afraid, perhaps even more so now that he was an adult, of being outed and ostracized. Why couldn't he have been scared of something easier to explain away, like a monster made entirely out of eyes or something? Being afraid of monsters was at least understandable to most people, since they had been through that phase of life. Being gay, though, was something people thought they understood but couldn't begin to comprehend. It was more than just being called names and beaten up by the likes of assholes like Henry Bowers. It was nodding sympathetically while casual acquaintances waxed poetic about their lovers, knowing he could never do the same if he had one. Listening to people throw out casual "dude, that's so gay" comments and trying to laugh along with them while ignoring the sinking feeling in his stomach. But most importantly, it was holding back because he didn't want his hypochondriac best friend to look at him like he was AIDS on two legs. The best friend he had been, and was still, hopelessly in love with.

  
He thought of the Kissing Bridge then. How he had picked out the most obscure corner and, amidst all the declarations of love by happy couples, carved two initials into the wood. He remembered looking at his handiwork and feeling like a load had been lifted off his chest, because it was the first time he had given a tangible form to his feelings and the innocuous R+E fit in perfectly with all the other carvings.

  
Maybe if he visited the bridge and ran his fingers over the carving, he'd be able to draw strength from it and get over his fear.

  
Richie consulted his mental map of Derry, took a moment to orient himself and headed to the bridge.

  
Compared to the hustle and bustle of the town square, the only noises in the vicinity of the Kissing Bridge were the gurgling of the stream and the whisper of leaves as the wind ran its fingers through the trees. Richie noted that the attempts to spruce up Derry appeared to focus on the city center; it had not extended to touching up the heavily graffitied bridge rails. Old, weathered carvings nestled side by side with more recent ones. He looked at the topmost corner of the rail facing north and there it was—R+E, almost completely faded away.

  
Richie rummaged through his pockets, looking for something sharp, but came up short. Of course—he had used a penknife last time. He squinted at the ground, trying to see if there was a rock that would suffice when—"Richie?"

  
Richie jumped as though he'd been struck by lightning and backed against the rail, shielding the R+E carving from view. Eddie looked at him strangely. "Is your token here?"

  
  
"Uh," Richie stammered, then focused on Eddie for the first time. "Jesus, Eds, what happened?"

  
Eddie looked down at his stained, rumpled clothes with a bitter smile. "Ran into a leper, freaked out and got lost trying to find my way back to the hotel. My token’s probably covered in the same shit, but Mike didn’t say it had to be clean. What're you doing here?"

  
"You saw a leper?"

  
"Yeah, remember all those monsters we saw as kids? I think Pennywise is playing mind games with us. It remembers our fears, and It's trying to break us with them. I don't know how we fought It off back then. I'm still scared of the same things. Disease. Dirt. Death."

  
"I don't know how we're going to fight It now either," Richie murmured. _Disease. AIDS. Don't touch the boys, Richie, they'll know your secret.  
_

  
"What's up, Rich? You're acting weird."

  
"I'm not," Richie said sharply.

  
"Yes you fucking are. You're not usually this quiet. Hey—did you run into something too? You did, right? Where were you? There's absolutely nothing here that could serve as a token. I remember this bridge. It's where lovers carved their names and shit. Wait, I'm babbling. What did you see?"

  
_Everyone saying they know my secret_. "The actual fucking clown himself."

  
"No shit? How did you fight It?"

  
"I didn't," Richie replied quietly, the shame welling up again in him as he recalled his failure to convince himself that everything was just in his head. Opening his eyes and seeing Pennywise's sharp teeth inches from his face, sure that he was going to die. But who was the real clown here? Eddie was terrified of disease and dirt, yet there he stood, drenched in who-knows-what and still functioning. In comparison, Richie was just a cowardly man who had spent his entire life hiding his feelings behind jokes, and they weren't even that good.

  
"Then how the fuck are you still alive? Richie, please stop being weird and talk to me."

  
Silence.

  
"Rich, please."

  
Richie kept quiet.

  
"Look at me, you asshole!"

  
Richie raised his head listlessly, and took in a sharp breath. There were tears in the corners of Eddie's eyes.

  
"This is another hallucination, isn't it? The fucking leper wasn't enough. Now I have to be tortured with seeing the guy I love turn into a fucking sock puppet. What am I supposed to do now? Run? Fight?"

  
Eddie never cried. It was part of the mass of contradictions that had drawn Richie to him. Everyone around school knew him as the sickly mama's boy who had gotten out of PE after his mother had showed up to school one day and made a scene. Eddie certainly looked the part, standing next to his mother and taking puffs from his inhaler as she ranted. But Richie had seen Eddie running after Bill as he rode that monster bike out of school, and he hadn't seemed out of breath then. The same quiet and unassuming boy who had gone on to make a your mom joke and matched Richie's foul mouth with his own, surprisingly colorful vocabulary. He was strength and courage packaged in a small, sickly body.

  
_What did he just say?_

  
"Did you just call me a sock puppet?"

  
"Oh, so _now_ you're talking to me? Jesus Christ, Richie! Of all the times to shut up! You go on and on like a possessed toy with the batteries removed and when I really need to discuss serious things with you—"

  
"Actually, let's talk about the other part. Did you say you l-love me?"

  
Richie could see the exact moment when Eddie reached the word "love" as he played back the conversation in his head. Eddie froze, his eyes wide, and his face started to turn red. Richie thought his heart might burst from the conflicting emotions this one simple word inspired. Doubt, hope, fear and joy all mixed into one. He had just decided that it was a slip of the tongue and Eddie might combust if he let this stretch on any longer, and was prepared to give the guy an out when Eddie exhaled loudly and said, "Fuck it, we're all gonna die anyway. Yeah. I love you, Richie.”

* * *

Eddie was sure that his skin was hot enough to fry an egg on. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears, and it seemed like all the blood in his body had rushed to his head. But the word had slipped out, there was no taking it back, and Richie was a big Hollywood man now. Hollywood was supposed to be more liberal about these things, right? Even if it was one-sided, it wasn't like Richie was going to go tattling to Myra.

  
Richie was frozen to the spot, staring at Eddie with an expression he couldn't read. More to fill up the silence than anything (_where's that Trashmouth when you need it??_), Eddie babbled on. "I know it seems like this came out of nowhere, considering I didn't even remember you existed until Mike called us back here. But I love you. I think I've loved you since we were kids. When you opened your mouth, it made me want to slap you and kiss you at the same time, and I didn't—don't—feel that way about any of the other guys or even Bev. I don't know why our group drifted apart afterwards, or if anything would have changed if we'd stayed together. It's not like we could have gone out on dates or dances in this shitty little town. But if there's one good thing that came out of this steaming mess, it's seeing you again and remembering how you made me feel. That's all I wanna say."

  
"Y-you mean it?" Richie said, sounding very uncertain and not Richie-like at all.

  
"Of course I mean it, dumbass!" Eddie snapped back, his skin prickling.

  
"But you're married."

  
"Yeah, I am. I suppose that makes me both stupid and a terrible person for getting married to someone I don't particularly love. I took the easier path because it was open to me. And if you're going to tell me that you and my mom are very happy together, I swear to God I will pitch you over this fucking bridge, so you can take that joke and shove it up your—"

"Eds," Richie sighed, and Eddie stopped mid-rant to look at him properly for the first time. Eddie had never seen this expression on Richie's face before. His features seemed softer somehow, and his eyes were glistening. It was both disconcerting and beautiful at the same time. Like all the barriers had come crashing down at once, revealing Richie as he was. Eddie thought his heart would pound right through his chest. "I don't think you're stupid or terrible."

  
"Well, thanks for the affirmation. I've made a lot of stupid decisions in my life. Maybe this will be one more for the list. But what the hell. Nothing has to change, okay? You can just pretend you didn't hear any of this, and we can go on with our suicide mission."

  
"I don't want to pretend that I didn't hear any of this," Richie said quietly.

  
"You... what?"

  
Richie was crossing the distance between them, slowly, uncertainly, as though giving Eddie time to change his mind. Eddie realized, in that moment, that he had never been surer of anything. He ran toward Richie, felt a pair of arms encircle him, and knew that he was home at last.

* * *

_Omigod, _Richie thought._ I'm holding Eddie. Actually holding him. It's completely different than how I imagined it would feel. Better, even. _He raised one hand to cup Eddie's chin. "Eds, are you..."

  
"_Yes_," Eddie said fiercely, and pushed his lips against Richie's.

  
_Holy fuck._

* * *

It was different, not just from a purely physical standpoint, but from an emotional one too. Kissing Myra had always reminded him of winding up an old clock—a mechanical process that might or might not result in the removal of clothes, and the removal of clothes might or might not result in sex. If he needed any more proof that he wasn't really in love with her, thinking about intimacy as such a boring, step-by-step process was probably the final nail in the coffin. For years, he had tried to ignore the relief he felt when she decided she wasn't in the mood. But kissing Richie made him want _more_. He tangled his hands through Richie's hair, wanting to pull him so close that the gulf of twenty-seven years vanished, and was surprised and a little hurt when Richie pulled away.

  
"I... we're in public," Richie said hesitantly.

  
"I know. So?"

  
"So...don't you ever worry about what people will think or say?"

"Of course I do. But there's no one here and we're having a moment, Richie. Your sense of timing is terrible."

  
  
"Really," Richie said, raising his eyebrows. "Just wait, I'll make you come in seconds."

  
"Is that an invitation?" Eddie challenged, emboldened by the new feelings coursing through him.

  
"I suppose... if you want it to be?" This uncertainty was really cute. Eddie had always suspected that Richie’s brash attitude was just a front to mask his insecurity, and it made him want to kiss Richie even harder. But then the shit-eating grin that had always warmed Eddie from the inside stole across Richie’s face, and his fat mouth ran away from his brain once again. “Get your mom in on the action too, okay, Eds? I’ve never had a mother-son combination strike before.”

“She’s dead, you moron.”

“Oh.” Richie wrinkled his nose. “Should I be sorry for that?”

Eddie pictured his mother shrieking at the PE teacher, and then marching him out of the gym and whispering, “I’m only trying to protect you from injuries, Eddie-bear.” Then he pictured Myra, calling him in the middle of office hours to guilt him into coming home earlier, cuddling up to him in bed and whispering, “I just want to make sure they don’t work you too hard, darling.”

“Nah, I don’t think so. She wasn’t a very good mother.” He flinched as the full impact of his words hit him and glanced up at the sky as though waiting for lightning to smite him for his blasphemy.

Richie twined his fingers through Eddie’s and squeezed. “Don’t feel guilty. Seriously.” He began to lead Eddie to the bridge. “Hey. While we’re here, I want to show you something.”

* * *

Richie felt invincible.  
  
Bring on the axe-swinging statues, the eye monsters, the werewolves. He’d fight them off with his bare hands. A weight he had been carrying for so long that he'd gotten used to it had lifted because somehow-- somehow, Eddie loved him too. Being ostracized by the person he loved had been a big part of his fear, and now that this was gone, that just left coming out. It was still somewhat intimidating—in a rare moment of self-reflection, he acknowledged that he was a lot more insecure than he led people to believe—but knowing that Eddie was waiting at the end of the long, rocky road helped a lot.  
  
They walked back to the hotel, hands linked, not saying anything. Vague practicalities danced at the back of his mind (Eddie would have to divorce his wife, one of them would have to move because there was no way he was going to waste any more time on long distance after twenty-seven years apart, they still had a fucking clown to kill, etc, etc) but he didn't voice any of them. He was living in the moment, holding hands with his childhood crush like shy middle schoolers out on a first date, and he couldn't care less that they were both middle-aged men past their prime.  
  
Okay, maybe Eddie had aged better than him, but he would never admit that out loud.  
  
Back at the hotel, they dropped hands to make their way up the narrow staircase. Eddie looked at him strangely as Richie made no move to head back to his room. "Um, you need something?"  
  
"I want to watch you shower, you dirty boy."  
  
Eddie's face turned red and he started to sputter. "What the—fuck you, you can't just—"  
  
"What, you don't want to wash all that shit off?"  
  
"Of course I do, dickwad! But not with you perving on me!"  
  
"Eduardo, chill," Richie laughed. "I'll be waiting in your room. Lying on the bed, fully clothed. Or completely naked, whatever you want."  
  
"You're not getting on the bed with your dirty clothes!"  
  
"So completely naked, then?"  
  
"No!" Eddie exploded. Then he bit his lip thoughtfully. "Actually, come in. But take the sofa, not the bed." He unlocked the door and pointed to the sofa by the lamp. "Sit."  
  
Woah, that commanding voice was hot. It certainly caused something down south to spring to attention. Richie walked awkwardly to the sofa and dropped onto it, crossing his legs in a way that he hoped wasn't completely obvious. Then he yelped as Eddie's dirty red hoodie sailed past his face. "Hey!"  
  
"I'd say make yourself at home, but I don't want you turning my room into a pigsty, so just sit tight. I'll be out in a bit."  
  
"How about a striptease, babe?" Richie called, laughing as Eddie shot him the finger and slammed the bathroom door shut. The next moment, he screamed in pain.  
  
_"Eddie!"_


	6. Chapter 6

Eddie barely had time to react to the hulking figure who had lunged out from behind the shower curtains when a sudden, excruciating pain bloomed in his cheek. He realized with dismay that his back was to the door which he had just slammed shut, essentially trapping him in the bathroom with this psycho. He did some frantic calculations as he struggled to dodge the guy's punches in the narrow space—how much time did he have to turn his back on his attacker, turn the doorknob and shove his way out of the bathroom? Could he trap the guy inside while he was at it? He definitely didn't have enough strength to hold the door shut on his own, but Richie was here too, and—

  
_"Eddie!!"_

  
Oh, shit. From the sound of things, Richie was frantically jiggling the knob, but the door remained tightly shut. Maybe the knob was just faulty, but Eddie doubted that this was a coincidence. All the indifferent citizens and creepy kids that they had encountered since coming back were in the palm of Its hand, including his attacker. And if he didn't get the hell out of the bathroom soon, he was going to die.

  
The guy lunged again, and Eddie realized that his attacker had played his trump card early on—he didn't seem to have any other weapons apart from the knife that he'd embedded in Eddie's cheek; Eddie could see the hilt out of the corner of his eye every time he moved. Motivated by the adrenaline coursing through his body, he grabbed it and pulled.

  
Whoever said "better out than in" had no fucking idea how much more painful it was to pull a knife out of his body. Eddie screamed like he was being flayed alive and the pounding on the other side of the door intensified. He dimly registered Richie's voice crying out for him, but it was taking every bit of effort to remain standing and brandish the bloodstained knife at his attacker. "Stay back," he panted hoarsely.

  
The psycho, who hadn't said a word all this time, paused mid-lunge and stared at the knife as though it held all the secrets to the universe. "Kill them all with my knife."

  
_My knife_. A distant memory chimed then—Ben telling them about how he had been cornered by Bowers and his gang, then lifting his shirt to show the H that Bowers had carved into his skin. He remembered the flash of anger in Bev's eyes as she saw the fresh wound, and Ben hurriedly dropping his shirt as he remembered that there was a pretty girl among the group of guys he was showing his pudgy stomach to. It couldn't be... could it? "Henry Bowers?"

  
The guy's only reaction was to lunge for the knife again. Eddie didn't remember what had happened to Bowers after they'd come up from the sewers, but was sure that this was him, all grown up and even uglier than before. He pressed himself against the door, just as it swung open and sent the two of them flying out of the bathroom.

  
In a moment that seemed to last an eternity, Eddie felt himself fall backwards with Bowers' snarling face in front of him. Then, a fresh gout of blood sprayed over his hands and Richie was screaming and trying to pull Bowers off him—"Get off him, you motherfucker, _get off_—" and he was no longer holding the knife, which was sticking out of Bowers' chest.

* * *

"Who the fuck is this?" Richie's voice quavered. He was dimly aware that he was this close to losing it. He dug his fingers into the guy's meaty arm, as though trying to hold on to what was left of his sanity. Eddie had just been assaulted by some rando who'd been hiding in his bathroom. His room wasn't even on the first floor! How'd this asshole get in?

  
"Believe it or not, it's Henry Bowers," said Eddie from the floor. Eddie, with a stab wound on his cheek and covered in blood in addition to the disgusting black gunk from before but was, miraculously, still alive.

  
"Henry _Bowers_?"  
  
"Yeah. Hey, he's being awfully quiet, isn't he?"

  
Richie looked at the guy's face, trying to map the adult features to that of the schoolyard bully that had terrorized them so many years ago. He thought he saw a passing resemblance. "What's he doing here?"

  
"No idea."

  
Richie recoiled from the bully, letting go of his arm. Bowers dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. "Eds, I think... I think he's dead."

"You'd better check his breathing to be sure," Eddie said calmly.

  
Richie reached out tentatively and held a hand under Bowers' nose, then tried to feel for a pulse. "I think he really might be dead."

  
"Just the same, I'd feel better if you tied him up. You can use the clothes in my luggage. I'd do it myself, but I think I should attend to my cheek first."

  
"R-right! You're bleeding!"

  
"I have gauze and medical tape in my luggage too."

  
"Jesus, Eds, we didn't come back for a Boy Scout camp."

  
"I just like being prepared," Eddie said with a touch of the exasperation he so often displayed when talking to Richie.

  
"You're amazing," Richie whispered, and he meant it. Eddie had somehow managed to beat a lunatic psychopath twice his size, and was calmly and systematically thinking of what to do next while Richie's mind was still stuck on the fact that they had once again come full circle, with their childhood enemy hunting them down while they geared up for the final battle.

  
"Thanks Rich, but could you tie him up first?"

  
While Richie fumbled through Eddie's neatly folded shirts and hoodies for something that looked strong enough, Eddie went to the bathroom to clean his wound and apply the bandage. By the time he reappeared with a neat gauze bandage over his cheek, the impact of everything that had just happened was starting to sink in, and he was babbling in the way he did when he got worked up. "I killed a man. I actually took a knife and stabbed a man."

  
"A man who was trying to kill you," Richie grunted, tying one of Eddie's long-sleeved shirts into random knots around Bowers' hands. "No jury would convict you for that."

  
"No offense, but you're a comedian, not a lawyer!"

  
"Actually, I had a cameo in a sitcom as a lawyer once. It was pretty funny, because I was supposed to be defending this guy who got accused of sexual harassment, but—"  
  
"That's not the same fucking thing! I can't go to jail! That's for criminals!"

  
"Really? I thought all the real criminals were in government." Eddie looked like he was about to pull the knife from Bowers' chest and stab him with it, so Richie hurriedly added, "Listen, Eds, I know I'm not a lawyer. But this is a completely unnatural situation, in a completely unnatural town. I have a feeling nobody will look into this. Mike said strange disappearances and violent crimes spike every twenty-seven years in Derry, and it's precisely because of people's indifference that this has gone on for so long."

  
"I'm sure It sent Bowers here. If It can control people and things in Derry, It's probably sending police officers to arrest us right now!"

"Somehow, I don't think so. Its control over Derry seems limited to negative things, like manipulating this fucker who was already crazy to begin with or getting people to look the other way when crazy shit happens. It sent Bowers because It can't come after us directly." Richie paused. He'd been talking out of his ass, saying whatever it took to calm Eddie down, but now he wondered if that was why Pennywise had disappeared instead of just biting his head off at the town square. "It has limits too. I think that's going to be important."

  
Eddie opened his mouth to shoot Richie down, then closed it as he gave it more thought. "You might be right."

  
"I'm always right, Eduardo. Also, you killing Bowers was really hot. I always knew that little body held a lot of pent-up rage, but watching it come out was something else altogether."

  
"I'm not short or little anymore, asshole."

  
"Wanna pull down your pants and prove it to me?"

  
Instead of answering, Eddie looked at Bowers with a pensive expression. "I know he was a dick, but if It was controlling him, he didn't really know what he was doing in the end. And I remember his dad was super fucked up too, which probably didn't help his mental state. Something's bound to give when you're caught in the middle like that."

  
Richie thought about all the beatings that Bowers had threatened him with and those he'd actually made good on. The slurs that had left him even more insecure and afraid. Then he thought about Eddie, caught between his hysterical, overprotective mother and Myra (Eddie hadn’t showed them a picture, but in his mind, she looked exactly like Mrs. Kaspbrak). There were so many things he wanted to say, but all that came out was, "Your empathy is a huge turn-on, Eds."

  
"Beep beep, Richie," Eddie said, but he smiled as he pulled Richie off the floor and away from the body. By the time their lips met, Richie didn't remember what he'd been trying to say anymore.

* * *

They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Eddie didn't know whether to be annoyed or grateful for that—he wanted to lose himself in Richie, but there was a dead body in the room and a huge battle looming on the horizon. Before Eddie could warn him to be careful, Richie had swung open the door, announcing, "It's Mikey!"

  
Mike had always been the most reserved and hardest to read of the Losers. Eddie suspected it was a combination of his isolated childhood and the awkwardness of being the only black kid among a group of white kids. As it was, he didn't look surprised to see Richie in Eddie's room, and only raised his eyebrows slightly when he saw Bowers on the floor. "Have you got your tokens yet?"

  
"I thought white people were supposed to be the slave drivers," Richie said sardonically.

  
Mike ignored him. "I need to know because Bill wants to fight It, right now."

  
They followed Mike down the corridor to another room that looked exactly like Eddie's. Bill was pacing around, while Ben and Bev were staring into space but snapped to attention when they entered.

  
"What's this about fighting It?" Richie demanded.

  
Bill swung around to face him, his eyes wild. "H-h-h-h-he..."

  
Bill's stutter had gotten even worse. It was almost as bad as the time when Georgie had just died; he'd barely been able to get a word out without stumbling over it and rather than offer up more ammunition for bullies, he'd decided to stay silent, at least while they were in school. Before Richie and later, Stan joined them, Eddie had grown used to listening to the sound of his own voice telling a story while Bill replied through hand gestures or facial expressions. It was agonizing to watch Bill’s frustration mount as he struggled to form words, but he remembered that Bill had hated when people tried to fill in his sentences for him, so they all stood awkwardly and waited.

  
It turned out that Pennywise had eaten the kid Richie had screamed at yesterday. Bill felt especially guilty because the kid, Dean, was living in his family's old house and had been hearing voices from the sink, suggesting that Dean had been targeted solely to rattle Bill. He wanted to go after It before any more deaths occurred.

  
"He was ready to storm Neibolt House on his own. I managed to get him to wait till everyone got back because we need everyone's tokens for the ritual to work, but..." Mike's voice trailed off. "Are you ready?"

  
Eddie longed to reach for his inhaler. What kind of question was that? Are you ready to take on a supernatural entity that takes on the shape of your worst fears? Fuck no. He would never be ready. But he understood that as scared as he was, nobody had more riding on this than Bill. And they had promised. "Let's go."

  
"Let's go before I change my mind," Richie agreed. Then he turned to Bev. "Can I have a cigarette for luck?"

  
"Get your own, asshole," she said, but gave him one anyway.

  
They walked to Neibolt House in silence, Richie and Bev puffing away. Before long, the house loomed before them, looking every bit like a stereotypical haunted house anyone with common sense would steer clear of. Richie tossed his cigarette onto the overgrown yard and Eddie half-wished the grass would catch fire and burn down the house, finishing the job for them. But of course it didn't.

  
"Last chance to back out," Richie said in a falsely cheerful voice.

  
"Let's g-g-go," Bill said firmly, and marched toward the door. The rest followed. Eddie and Richie were at the very back, and unseen by everyone else, Eddie grabbed Richie's hand and squeezed.


	7. Chapter 7

_I'm the biggest fucking idiot in the world._

  
Pennywise had rolled out the red carpet the moment they stepped into the house, and it only gotten worse as they ventured down the well into the sewers. They had followed Mike's instructions and tossed their tokens into the pottery (of course Eddie's was an inhaler), but everything had gone downhill from there. Mike had lied about the ritual. Richie didn't have the time or energy to be mad, not when he was shitting his pants over the cute puppy-turned-monster and scrambling to get away from the giant spider clown. This dark, mouldy pisshole was going to be their grave and nobody in Derry or even Hollywood would notice or care, because who was Richie Tozier but just another run-of-the-mill funnyman?

  
Suddenly, the cave vanished. He was no longer looking at the terrifying spider clown with the screams of his friends ringing in his ears. He was curled up in bed with the blankets pulled over his head... browsing Twitter?

  
"You're gonna go blind if you keep that up," said a familiar voice, and someone yanked the blankets down. It was Eddie, hair rumpled and dressed in an oversized college t-shirt Richie would swear was his. He noticed for the first time that his bed was much bigger than before, and there was another set of pillows on it.

  
"If I go blind, I can always have you give me a hand to whack one out, right?"

  
"I'm not putting my hands anywhere near your unwashed dick."

  
"I seem to remember you putting my dick in your mouth last night..."

  
"And you haven't washed it since! You're disgusting!" But even as he said this, Eddie snuggled into the bed next to Richie. "What're you looking at?"

  
"Twitter. My name's trending right now."

  
"That sounds like a good thing."

  
"Depends on the context." Richie clicked to the top tweet, which was accompanied by a short video of Richie gesticulating as he spoke to a popular talk show host.

  
** COMEDIAN RICHIE TOZIER COMES OUT AS GAY**

  
"I thought you weren't going to say anything until your new show next month?"

  
"It kind of slipped out," Richie said sheepishly. "I was talking about the new show, dropping teasers about an important announcement, then she asked if it had anything to do with me suddenly going off the radar a couple of months ago, and I said yeah, I got reacquainted with a great guy during that time, and of course everyone zoomed in on that part."

  
"That doesn't sound like a coming-out announcement to me."

  
"It wasn't. But you know they have to sensationalize everything, and I was planning to say something eventually. So I just pushed ahead and published a statement on Twitter confirming that yes, half the jokes in my routine are about banging women, but I'm gay as a fucking rainbow. That's what people are talking about."

  
Eddie looked stunned for a second, then threw his arms around Richie. "I'm so fucking proud of you."

  
"I threw up after the show," Richie confessed. "And after I published the statement on Twitter."

  
"I knew you didn't really have food poisoning," Eddie said reproachfully. Then he grinned. "But I'm so, so fucking proud of you." He readjusted himself so he was leaning over Richie, arms braced against either side. "I think such bravery deserves a reward."

  
_(Isn't there something else you're forgetting?)_

  
Eddie's lips pressed against his, and Richie felt his body come alive instantly. He dropped his phone and let his hands glide over Eddie's body, roaming lower and lower until they were skimming the bottom of his shirt.

  
_(Richie, NO!)_

  
His hand slipped under the waistband of Eddie's boxers, and it didn't take long to find what he was looking for. He brought his hand up and down in swift, frenzied strokes. Eddie was moaning against him and the sounds were driving Richie insane, _holy shit_, _this feels so good_...

  
"Get away, you motherfucker!"

  
Suddenly, the illusion shattered, and Richie fell to the ground with a thump. He had the sense of something retreating, something with huge jaws and razor-sharp teeth and an oddly enticing glowing light. His eyes followed the light as it swayed.

  
Then someone was dragging him backwards through a cramped, tight space, and someone was yelling something else. He still couldn't make out the words, nor form any or his own.

  
"Wh—?"

  
"The Deadlights," said a voice in his ear.

  
"Dead—?"

  
"Yeah. We trapped them in the pottery, remember? But the ritual didn't work. It almost got you." Then the voice yelled, "Eddie, no, get away from there!"

  
_Eddie._

  
Richie tried to get up, but his legs still felt like jelly. "Eddie!"

  
"Shhh, Richie, he's safe. He's coming. Stay where you are."

  
Ben. This was Ben's voice. But what was Eddie doing? Was he in danger?

  
"We need to regroup," said another voice tersely. _Bev_.

  
Clarity was starting to return to Richie's head. He was half-lying on the floor in a tiny cave (_a cave-within-a-cave?_), with Ben supporting his body weight while Bev's eyes darted between them and the small opening. He couldn't see the light anymore, which helped.

  
An odd shape was struggling to get through the opening. Richie tensed up, but Bev looked relieved as she ran to help it inside. The shape resolved itself into Bill, Mike and Eddie. Eddie was propped up between them and his right arm was bent at an unnatural angle, but he was there. He was _alive_.

  
"I kn-know what we need to do now," said Bill. "It's all about b-b-belief. We b-believed we were invincible as k-kids, and that's how we suh-survived. The r-r-ritual didn't work because there was still doubt in our hearts. But when Eh-Eddie st-stabbed It, he hurt It because he b-b-believed he could s-save Richie."

  
"It has limitations," Richie said suddenly.

  
Five pairs of eyes swung toward him.

  
"It's a monster that feeds on fear. It won't have any leverage on us once we get rid of that fear."

  
"But we don't have any more weapons," Ben said nervously.

  
"It may be a monster, but at Its very core, It's scared of us. It's insecure, just like all bullies are."

  
"So, we need to believe that we can kill a huge spider clown thing by, what, shouting that we're not scared of it anymore?" Bev said, twisting her fingers.

  
"Hey, words have always been my strongest weapon. And we overcame all those nightmare scenarios, right? We have nothing to be afraid of anymore."

  
There was a loud, thunderous roar from outside, and everyone jumped. They didn't have much time left. Richie hadn't been lying when he said his words were a weapon—he was done using them as a shield, masking his insecurities with jokes and innuendos. Of course, seeing as jokes were the foundation of his career, this might call for a career switch, but maybe he could be a risk analyst like Eddie. He'd switch the studio lights and camera for a cubicle and a computer, as long as Eddie was with him.  
  
_I'm not afraid of you anymore, motherfucker._

* * *

Eddie watched dazedly as the exterior of Neibolt House started to crumble. Everything had happened so fast; he'd barely had time to think about the disgusting substance spewing from Its heart mingling with all the sewer water and slime and goo he was coated in when the cave started to collapse. After that, it had been a blur of splashing through the water, being helped out of the ground by his friends, and stumbling past the rusty iron gates that marked the compound of the house. His lungs burned, but in a good way, and the urge to diminish the pain by taking a puff from his inhaler was gone. Maybe he should take up jogging after this.

  
Everyone was staring at Neibolt House, captivated by the weird beauty of its destruction. He felt a sudden pain in his arm and shouted out, breaking the spell. Ben, ever the gentleman, immediately whipped off his shirt and started fashioning a makeshift splint for Eddie. "You should see a doctor as soon as you can—if not one in Derry, maybe the next town over—and make sure it sets right. If the bone doesn't set right, it can lead to complications."

  
A sudden memory of his mother's hysterics when she had brought him to the doctor to get a cast surfaced. She had assuaged the doctor with questions about bone splinters and muscular atrophy, and when Eddie had started to panic at the prospect of his arm shriveling up from disuse, she had hugged him and swore that she would protect and love him even if he only had one arm. He blinked the memories away. "Thanks Ben, but your shirt is disgusting."

"We could probably g-get bandages from the pharmacy instead of using a shirt," Bill suggested. Ben's face turned red, but Bev squeezed his hand and he smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, Eddie."

  
"It's fine," Eddie said, and he meant it. He was glad Ben cared enough to help, rather than stand there and cry helplessly the way his mother or Myra would have done. Anyway, they were all filthy.

  
"Put your shirt back on, Lover Boy," said Richie. "Your muscles are giving me a complex."  
  
"I'm not complaining," said Bev, and she and Ben exchanged one of those long looks where a million unsaid things passed between them. Eddie wondered if he and Richie would ever be so in sync.

  
"So, to the pharmacy?" Mike asked.

  
"Not yet," Richie said. He looked at Eddie, and Eddie swore it was their turn to have a silent conversation. He tried to telegraph with his eyes that it was fine with him, that their best friends in the world should be the first to know.

  
Instead of continuing to speak now that he had everyone's attention, Richie walked up to Eddie, close enough that Eddie could smell the remnants of cigarette smoke peeking through the overwhelming sewer scent that engulfed them. Then he said, "Check this out, virgins," and kissed Eddie so long and so hard that his legs almost gave way.

  
Eddie didn't know who pulled away first, but as his senses gradually returned to him, he noticed that the other Losers were smiling. Well, Ben and Mike were smiling. Bill was smirking, and Bev had clapped a hand over the huge grin on her face.

  
"Only took you twenty-seven years to figure it out," Bev said. She turned to Bill. "You owe me five bucks."

  
"What?"

"I bet Richie would make the first move."

  
"When did we ever m-make a bet?"

  
"Twenty-seven years ago, one of those afternoons in the clubhouse, remember? Richie and Eddie were the only ones missing. We all took bets on who would make the first move, and you were the only one who bet on Eddie. Stan wrote it all down. The notebook's probably somewhere in the clubhouse, if you need proof."

  
"Wait, you were betting on us?" Eddie exclaimed.

  
"That's not right at all!" Richie agreed. "As subjects of the bet, we're entitled to royalties."

  
"That's not what I meant, dumbass!"

  
"And there they go again," Mike said, loud enough for Eddie to hear.

  
"Actually," Richie interrupted, "Eds here made the first move. It happened off-screen, if you will, but it was him. So all of you owe Bill five bucks each, and Bill needs to give us all the money because weddings are expensive."

  
"Wait, you were betting on us? And what wedding? Rich, _what wedding_?"  
  



	8. Epilogue

Richie wished he didn't throw up when he got nervous. Braced over the toilet or sink while his mind battled valiantly against his body’s overwhelming need to expel food the wrong way was not his idea of fun. Furthermore, stomach acid was bad for teeth. He tried to focus on the list of dentists that specialized in teeth-whitening, which his agent had given him, instead of the contents of his puke (_oh God, is that what half-digested Cocoa Puffs look like?_)

  
Someone knocked on the door. "Richie?"

  
" 'S just food poisoning," he croaked. "Be out soon."

  
He relaxed as the person padded away from the bathroom door. He had most likely thrown up everything he'd eaten since breakfast, but if he stayed there any longer, the smell would start Round 2. He hauled himself off the floor and started the familiar routine of cleaning up after himself (flushing the toilet, brushing his teeth, lots of mouthwash and breath mints, a spritz of air freshener to mask the smell).

  
He walked out of the bathroom, ready to face the world again. Eddie was curled up on their bed, scrolling through his phone. Richie was about to make a joke about him playing an outdated app game reserved for boomers when Eddie shoved the phone in his face. It was a picture of the statement he'd published on Twitter earlier, after his slip of the tongue on the talk show, confirming that he was gay. "So, food poisoning, huh?"

  
Richie smiled weakly. "Yeah. I'm surprised you haven't poisoned yourself with your own cooking, Eds. It really sucks."

  
"I thought you weren't going to say anything until your new show next month?"

  
"Well, it kind of slipped out so I thought..." Richie's voice trailed off. "Have we had this conversation before?"

  
"Don't change the subject," Eddie said warningly. Richie had come to know this tone very well. He backed down. "I'm not changing... okay, maybe a little. I thought I'd gotten over the fear of coming out, but maybe it's still there."

  
"It's understandable. It's hard enough coming out at a personal level. It's even worse when you're opening yourself up to judgement from strangers as a public figure." They both fell silent. Richie was sure Eddie was thinking about Myra. He had tried to stay away from that particular minefield as they worked through their divorce—no matter what kind of spin you tried to put on it, he was the third person in their marriage, and that reflected badly on Eddie. He had arguably lost more than Richie. 

But Eddie smiled, and Richie felt his breath catch in his throat. "I'm so fucking proud of you." He pushed Richie down on the bed and kissed him, and Richie hoped the breath mints were doing their job. Judging from Eddie's enthusiasm, they were. The phone clattered off the bed, forgotten.

  
Once upon a time, in a place that Richie was already starting to forget, Eddie had said he had a terrible sense of timing. He demonstrated this now, one hand down the front of Eddie's boxers. "Eds, I swear I've had this conversation with you before."

  
"Shut... up," Eddie panted. "Do you really...want to talk now?"

  
It only took a split second for Richie to decide. "No, I don't think so."

  
"Then _shut up_."

  
Richie did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I operate on my own version of It's 27-year "feeding cycle" where I don't write anything for years, then suddenly wake up and decide to write because why not. It usually coincides with periods of IRL stress, which is oddly masochistic because why am I putting myself through stress on two fronts hahaha...
> 
> Anyway I'm working on something else too, not sure how it's gonna go, but thanks for reading this✌️


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